"I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it." -- Trump, 12/11/18

Words of Advice:

"Never Feel Sorry For Anyone Who Owns an Airplane."-- Tina Marie

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

"Flying the Airplane is More Important than Radioing Your Plight to a Person on the GroundWho is Incapable of Understanding or Doing Anything About It." -- Unknown

"There seems to be almost no problem that Congress cannot, by diligent efforts and careful legislative drafting, make ten times worse." -- Me

Thursday, November 30, 2017

If the effects of Trump's Tax Cut for the Billionaires is as bad as many say, the blowback at the polls could be enormous.

If that happens, then expect an assault weapons ban to follow shortly thereafter. And I will wager that it won't be a simple "you can't make these any more" thing, it'll be closer to a `34 National Firearms Act law, with bans on making magazines over 10 rounds, if not outlawing the drum-style ones.

So if you're a Republican and a gun owner, you might want to think about whether you are more interested in protecting the ability of the plutocrats to get even richer or protecting your gun rights. For you may not get to choose "both".

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Let's be frank about this: President* Donald Trump is fucking barking mad. Trump is unhinged, divorced from reality, about about as insane as they come. Only a through-and-through nut job would believe that juvenile-grade insults are a substitute for international diplomacy.

His staff has to continually lie in order to keep him more or less functional. No rational person would have believed that the Mueller investigation would have been done by Thanksgiving or by New year's Day, but that's what his staff seems to be telling Trump in order to keep him from completely blowing out his gaskets.

He should be in a padded room where he can't be a danger to anyone else.

But to the Koch Brothers and the rest, he's their useful idiot, so for now, we're stuck with El Droolo.*
_________________________________* I know it probably should be El Babeante.

The paper will honor off-the-record requests if the person requesting it is being straight with them. But since O'Keefe's minion wasn't being honest, they've released what they know about the minion. Who is named Jaime T. Phillips.

Trump is gone past lying to his family, his business associates (I doubt if he has any real friends), his party and the nation.

Now he's lying to himself. If reality isn't to his liking, he constructs an alternative reality in his head and goes there.

It should be clear, by now, that Trump's lawyers were saying that Mueller's investigation would be over by Thanksgiving as a fib to control an unruly client. It's sort of like telling a five-year-old, when they're badgering you about "when will we get there", that "we'll be there in ten minutes", when you're an hour away. Trump would have flipped out if they had told him that Mueller's not winding things down, but that he's still building up steam.

It's going to be a race between impeachment, Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, and Trump blowing his fuses and collapsing.

It's a safe bet that most of the GOP establishment is praying for Trump to blow his fuses before he does more damage to his party than he already has.

Speculation is that there are so few coppers left on the NYPD who are carrying revolvers that the Department doesn't want to have to continue maintaining them, buying ammunition and running qualifications for them.

I suspect that there are few old cops that management wants to push out and they believe that those old guys will retire rather than switch to a bottom-feeder.

Friday, November 24, 2017

I volunteer at a thrift store that supports the local no-kill animal shelter. My job is to triage and sort the incoming donations.

This camera setup came in today:

I can't tell you how much it aches my soul that a Canon AE-1 with a Canon 65-200mm zoom lens is now worthy only of being donated to a thrift store. I don't know if it works, as the AE-1s required a battery to run them. Unlike, say, the FTs, (I had one, back in the day) that only needed a battery for the light meter.

I've been active in photography from the prosumer level to professional press photography. The difference between film photography and digital is akin to the difference between shooting with a muzzleloader and shooting a minigun with government-furnished ammo. You'd set things up, take the shot, and unless you had access to a darkroom, it could be days or weeks until you knew whether or not you got the shot. And if you were a not-wealthy amateur, using good film like Kodachrome was expensive. so you made sure that you got the shot that you wanted.

But digital? Once you've bought the camera and the SD card, there's no additional cost differential between shooting one photo and a thousand. Oh, if you have a camera that uses replaceable batteries (I like my A1000 because it uses two AAs), you might go through a few sets. But that cost is negligible.

Yes, I can be a bit of an old-school girl. I fly a `40s airplane. Today, I carried a S&W M&P that dates back to the Roaring 20s. But I abandoned film without a qualm.

I'm going to step away from railroading this week. This is a film on making steel in Britain in 1945. There are some railroad shots in it, but not many:

Nobody would walk into such a place today. Back then, their idea of safety headgear was wearing two fedoras. Guys are peering into open steel furnaces without any sort of safety goggles, let alone dark glasses. Leather gloves seem to be it for safety gear.

Part of the Thanksgiving ritual was to go out into the back pasture's ravine and do some shooting. Chip was "helping" me clean some guns:

Clockwise from the upper left: A FN High Power, a S&W Model 64 and a Smith & Wesson M&P.

All were used to help some pumpkins get a jump-start on recycling. I have a Savage .22 bolt-action rifle with an Accu-trigger and a scope that a early-teenaged boy used to shoot a small pumpkin into itty-bitty pieces.

At Chip's feet, you can see the bore brush that he kept trying to steal. I was able to distract him by allowing him to swipe a cotton swab.

I need to detail-strip and clean my 22/45, for the trigger wasn't always resetting.

Life being what it is, I've not made it very much recently. When there is a gathering for a special feast, I'll whomp up a couple of loaves. The stores where I have been for the last several years didn't carry much in the way of flour, other than the generic store brands and Gold Medal. The bread I made from them was pretty good, all right.

But now the stores here are carrying King Arthur flour. So I bought some and used it when I made bread early this morning. A number of people at dinner today were raving about the bread, saying that it was the best I've ever made. The only change from other times was the flour.

If you're baking, look for King Arthur flour. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

On a number of radio stations back in the day, playing the entire song was a Thanksgiving tradition. Some of them were commercial stations-- almost nineteen minutes of no commercials. And some of them played it twice, at noon and 3 PM.

Of course he was, the creep. How many adult men in their late 20s go to kiddie dance recitals, unless they have a family member who is performing? I'm guessing that, excluding pedophiles and other creeps, the number is somewhere between zero and a very small number.

At this point in the game, Trump would support a cannibal if the cannibal pledged fealty to El Caudillo Trumpo.

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

The flames of accusations against public figures are intensifying. Women and men who, in thepast, were afraid to come forth are now doing so. Jon Conyers, Charlie Rose and Al Franken are among the latest men so accused. If Wisdom of the Crowd wasn't already being axed, it might be now that its leading actor, Jeremy Piven has been accused. Kevin Spacey was deleted from a soon-to-be released movie.

I'm not discounting the possibility that some of the accusations may be bogus. The Duke lacrosse scandal is instructive. Multiple accusers, though, make a false accusation less likely.

It's also instructive to see what the accused do. Are they digging in? Are they admitting to the accusations that are true, apologizing unconditionally[1] and standing up to take whatever they have coming to them?[2] Or are they weaseling out with non-denial denials and claims of conspiracy?[3]

"It's OK If You're a Republican" is once, more, a rule of the game.[4]
_____________________________________________[1] "I'm sorry if you were offended by my conduct" is bullshit.
[2] Otherwise known as "acting like a man".
[3] Otherwise known as "pulling a Roy Moore".
[4] We expect less from Republicans. And that's exactly what we get.

The facility is a multi-level care facility; independent living, assisted living (which they call "personal care"), memory care (dementia, I guess) and nursing home care.

Kendal is a high-end operation. The buy-in at those places is the cost of a nice home in a suburb of a medium-sized city; the monthly payment for the independent living sections, depending on the size of the unit, is two or more Aircraft Maintenance Units.

It's not one of those places where the nursing home has a smell that has a base note of stale piss. But at those prices, it shouldn't smell like that to begin with.

Whether McMaster is a toady who will do whatever it takes to cleave close to a center of power or if he is bravely sacrificing his reputation in order to do what he can to preserve the Republic is a question for another time.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Being trapped in a sub at the bottom has to be a bubblehead's worst nightmare. The TR-1700 class has a test depth of 300 meters, which, as it's a German design, implies a crush depth of 600 meters. The SRDRS resportedly can go that deep.

The conspiracy theorists have been going batshit about their latest bit of insanity- that a rogue planet is going to smash into the Earth, eject Earth from the Solar System, or so alter Earth's orbit that Earth will be uninhabitable.

Second, if this shit were real, there is fuck-all that could be done about it.

But this shit is not real. There is zero evidence of any such planet. So if you believe in this shit, ther's what you should do: If you're a woman, call your gynecologist and schedule an emergency tubal ligation. If you're a man, call your urologist and schedule an emergency vasectomy.

Here are some helpful tips for the believers in this shit:

Do not stick knives into electrical outlets.

Do not run with scissors.

Do not go outside during a thunderstorm and hold golf clubs over your head.

There are no Nigerian princes who want to send you fifteen million dollars.

Actually, that there is anybody who believes in this shit is depressing as all hell. It's not just one or two, but millions. Maybe tens of millions. People who vote and reproduce.

"The safety of the public and environment are our top priorities and we will continue to provide updates as they become available," the company said.

Yeah, sure they are. {/sarcasm} This isn't exactly an aging pipeline as things go. Dumping over 200,000 gallons of oil into the local watershed isn't a minor event.

You can be pretty sure that Trump had a two word reaction to the news of the leak, along the lines of "oh, well" or "shit happens", if he even heard about it. Probably not, for "Fox and Friends" is a propaganda show, not a news show.

Houlton made his comments over several years. But in his "I'm outta here" statement, he pretty much said that he's changed his mind, now that he has had an opportunity to meet black people and Muslims. If that's true, then I applaud his change of beliefs.

Yellow on the front sight of the M64 didn't work very well. I changed it to orange. I also had a light recrowning done, as it looked pretty nasty. I was able to run it at a not-terribly-low rate on a B-27 target at ten yards. It's not a collector's gun, but having a stainless gun in a place where summertime humidity can get into the "fuck me, I'm melting" zone is a good thing.

I bought the recent M15-3 kind of on a whim, and because nobody seemed to notice the auction. I already had a Model 15, but it seems that it has some collector value, in that it's a "no dash" model with original grips and the factory-installed trigger stop. Model 15s were intended to be service guns (hence the original name of "Combat Masterpiece"). It turned out that in heavy use, the trigger stop screw could loosen, the stop would rotate and jam things up. S&W advised removing them.

Revolvers have a few advantages in any possible changes in the political landscape. But you can figure that out for yourself. I do have a permit in at least one state with capacity limits. And, if the future calls for me to move toone of those places, I won't be faced with either having to sell off guns or get neutered magazines for others.

Besides that, I like them. I tend to shoot them better. And I've found that they conceal better, as the big mass in a IWB carry is inside the belt-line.

Considering that those vultures target people living on the edge with interest rates that are at loan-shark rates, one has to wonder why Moore is siding with them. And considering the racial identity of Moore and the state Warner is from, you'd think that both would have an interest in making it harder for the banksters and the legalized loan sharks to target poor people and minorities.

But sadly, no. You have to wonder how much of the banksters' filthy lucre campaign contributions they had to take in order to betray their constituents in such a fashion.

Why did he stop? It wasn't marriage, for he didn't get married until `85.

Did somebody in law enforcement pull him aside and point out that if he continued on, that he'd be arrested? Or did one of the male relatives of the girls he was creeping on have a little "man to shotgun" talk with him? Could any of that be why he left the area and went to work on a ranch in Australia?

As I've mentioned before, I think the implementation of self-driving trucks will result in the largest elimination of working-class jobs since the railroads dieselized. Or robots took over the vehicle production lines. But so far, no politician is seriously talking about what will happen.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

I was at a meeting earlier today. The presenter and one of the people asking questions were two individuals who couldn't stop talking. I observed to the people at my table that "they must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle." I could have been speaking in Finnish for the number of blank stares that observation generated.

Some of it is still good information, especially using small-arms fire to force the tank crews to button up. That's a problem that's being worked on. I'll bet that a gizmo to launch a cloud of small flechettes at a tank to disable those camera systems is already in the works.

Not any more, it seems. Ten years ago, a perv like Roy Moore would have had the moral decency to slink back under his rock. Now, they have to try and push him to quit and so far, Gropin' Roy isn't going away.

Now we see that the only value that the "values voters" cherish is political power. They will tolerate anyone, even an alleged child molester, so long as said alleged molester cloaks himself in their cloth.

I guess I'm old enough to recall when the Republicans claimed that they had the moral high ground. Not any more.

So this is what I say: If the evangelicals and "values voters" are so enamored of political power that they will tolerate knowingly support the candidacy of an alleged pedophile, then that tells me all that I need to know about their so-called morals and values.

And if the voters of Alabama elect Moore as their senator, that tells me all that I need to know about their state.

Unless you have a real need to shoot 10mm, my initial reaction is that this doesn't pass the Wuffo Test.

The Super Redhawk is a 54oz gun. Almost all of the other Super Redhawks are in more potent calibers. From what I can see, a 10mm doesn't do anything that a .41 Magnum can't.

My real beef is that the 10mm is a rimless cartridge, so you'd need some flavor of moon clip in order to extract the fired case. That's just one more little bit of metal, and if you're going to avoid bending them, you'll need a "mooning" and "demooning" tools. If they do get bent, then they'll likely jam the gun.

To my mind, one of the advantages of a revolver is that you don't need to have anything else: Just ammunition to shoot. Oh, sure, you can get speedloaders for a faster reload. If you're a serious competition shooter, you can have them set for moon clips for revolver rounds. But the guns so converted will still chamber, fire and extract single rounds.

If you lose the moonclips for a revolver firing automatic cartridges, or if the clips are damaged, you have a gun that is a paperweight. If the chambers are set to headspace the rounds on the cartridge mouths, you have a gun that you can shoot, provided that you have a dowel rod with which to punch out the empties.

I don't know of what can be done in any of the revolvers chambered for autoloading cartridges that can't be done with an equivalent revolver round, which is both rimmed and crimped for use in revolvers.

But what the hell do I know. If a 10mm revolver floats yer boat, break out your plastic and go for it.

Southern Ohio Gun has (or had) a number of S&W M64s in the "skosh below $300" range. I bought one through my LGS:

It is a 64-5. For some reason, somebody put square-butt Pachmyer grips on a round-butt gun. That'll be something I'll change, eventually. The timing is OK. It's kind of close on a couple of double-action cylinders, but it's good for now. There's no endshake. It's definitely a shooter-grade gun that has seen some hard use.

I took it to the range. This is at ten yards, with the bare stainless-steel fixed sights:

I'll paint them before the next range outing with some cheap yellow nail polish on the front post and black on the rear notch. Shiny metal sights are not very friendly to use. I like using nail polish for changing the colors of sights, for it's cheap, easy to touch up and if I want to change the color or remove it completely, it comes right off with some acetone on a cotton ball or swab.

Now I have three of the classic five stainless Ks. If I see a 67 at a good price, I'll jump on that. 68s are rare, I've never seen one, let alone seen one up for sale.

I submit that this sort of shit goes on almost everywhere. If Jane Nafka, a garden variety heroin addict, had offered sex in order to get out of a traffic beef, chances are they'd have also cited her for attempted bribery and solicitation of a sex act. But things are different for the kids of the powerful.

Here's the thing: Most coffee-makers are durable products. You buy one, you don't need another for a very long time. The tighty-righties smashing their Keurigs does jack-point-shit to Keurig. But it does create sales for the other coffee-makers.

The only people that the Keurig-smashers are hurting is themselves. But hey, have at it. The stores selling replacements will be happy.

Of course Trump knows, by now, that the Russians have been meddling in our elections. The professional intelligence people have been telling him that.

But Trump won't listen. Deep down in the core of his putrifying soul, Trump knows that his presidency is an illegitimate one, birthed by Russian interference. It gnaws on him. That's why he was so insistent that more people were on the National Mall for his inauguration than anyone else, despite the abundant photographic evidence to the contrary. That's why, a year after the election, he keeps talking about his "victory". He can't stop talking about it becauce he knows it's all built on lies and foreign meddling.

So when his ertwhile boss in Moscow tells Trump "Donald, you know ve had nothing to do with it," Trump has no choice but to believe the lies of a professional spymaster.

Today is Veterans Day. It was Armistice Day until 1954. Congress changed the name to honor living veterans. The dead already had their own day. In '54, with World War 1 having ended 36 years before, World War 2 ended 9 years before, and a year after the Korean Armistice, there were a lot of veterans around.

It would be nice if we could figure out a way to stop making them.

Thank a veteran. In this world, we need brave men and women to do the needful in harsh places.

A family came in to look at cats and they couldn't decide between two. One was Chaplin. They took the paperwork home to talk it over. Often that means "nope, but we don't want to say that". We're keeping our fingers crossed. Chaplain is a staff favorite, there will be tears when he goes to a loving home. But he absolutely should, he's a cool cat.

With any luck, as this post is being preloaded, he may already have gone home.

Also, Chris Chrities's lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, sought to step up into his job. She was shellacked. Whether the NJ voters were in an anti-Trump mood or Guadagno couldn't escape Christie's stench will be fodder for the local pundits.

Sadly, Sheriff Tackitt, it is not "unbelievable" any more. This sort of slaughter, where a white gunman shoots lots of people for no apparent reason, is becoming a common event. It's been about five weeks since the Asswipe of Las Vegas killed nearly sixty people, now we have another Asswipe killing two dozen-plus people.

Apparently, this particular Asswipe had a bad-conduct discharge from the Air Force for domestic violence. The BCD isn't disqualifying for owning a gun, but the domestic violence conviction should have been. The Air Force might want to figure out how those things get coded and reported to the Feds who run the background check system.

This can't keep going on before there will be a clamor to "do something, for G-d's sake." The politicians will do something. People can die in drips and drabs here and there and nobody gets excited. I don't have the time to find it this morning, but I've written before that the 9-11 death toll was about equivalent to five or six weeks' worth of road fatalities. The number of people killed yesterday in Sutherland Springs is about half the monthly murder toll in Chicago.

So Ross has been using a network of offshore firms in order to obscure the fact that he is in business with not only the Russians, but with Russians who have been sanctioned by the United States.

And not just Russians, mind you. Ross's business dealings include Venezuela's state oil company.

Ross's defense is "I don't talk to them directly, I just take their money."

I'm sure that Fox News and the rest of the Right Wing Noise Machine will sprain their legs, jumping to defend Ross. But when they do, ask yourself what would they be saying if you only substituted "Ross" with "Clinton".

What the terrorists want us to force us to do stupid shit. When a mouth-breathing moron like Trump proposes cutting off avenues for emigration to the U.S., that enables the terrorists to say "see, brothers, they really are at war with all of the faithful."

Trump, of course, ever passes up an opportunity to divide people and insult his perceived opponents. He has no concept of the presidential role of being a force for unity and a consoler. No, he'd rather spit in your face, shiv you in the back and then dance on your grave. That's the way he has been since his first job of making sure black people didn't live in his daddy'd rental properties. He's never changed.[1]

A Nazi drives a car into a crowd of people...Trump has to wait for all of the facts and then praises the "good people" on the side of the Nazis. A Muslim drives a truck into a crowd of people...Trump calls for immediate changes to a green card program, because all immigrants are bad people. White guy uses a gizmo to effectively turn his rifles into machine guns and kills nearly sixty people...Trump is silent. Muslim kills over fifty people in a nightclub...Trump calls for banning all Muslims from coming to the U.S.

Do you see a pattern?

The terrorist groups, al Qaeda, ISIS/Daesh, all proclaim to their followers that "America is at war with Islam". Their chief propagandist in this is Donald J. Trump. The last two presidents were smart enough (or well-advised enough) not to fall into that trap. George W. Bush, in particular, continually reached out to American Muslims in order to counter the terrorist propaganda. Trump, on the other hand, parrots terrorist propaganda.

Trump is an unwitting tool of the terrorists. He is mentally and tempermentally unfit for his job.
______________________________[1] Melania Trump's anti-bulling initiative is ironic as all fuck, considering that she's married to the Bullying Asshole in Chief. [2] Some of those Nazis are "good people, according to Trump.

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Included here are links to the reports of the collisions of the USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain.

There are things in the reports that are inexcusable: Ignorance of the nautical rules of the road among the Fizgerald's wardroom. Failure to understand the traffic routing scheme on the part of the Fitzgerald. Screwing up the steering system on the McCain, a failure that began with the CO and worked its way down. The Bridge and CIC teams on both ships screwed the pooch.

There are also bright spots. Both ships' crew responded well to the collisions. Damage control teams stood up quickly and effectively. The Navy has emphasized damage control readiness and training for decades and it paid off.

But frankly, it's still a whitewash job. The reports dump all of the blame on the crews of the ships without an even passing look at why the ships got to where they were. It was not just failure by watchstanders and their respective captains and XOs, the rot goes far deeper.

Gentle Readers, the Navy has 84 surface combatants, not counting the DDG-1000 and the execrable Little Crappy Ships. That is 84 surface warships, total, of which, maybe 25-30% are in the yards for overhaul. Thirty years ago, the Navy had more than that number of frigates, which made up half of the total number of surface combatants (which doesn't include carriers and subs).

We have ships making back-to-back deployments. The time back home (usually less than six months) is never enough to do the training and refitting required for the next deployment.

My bottom line is this: We are asking our military, not just the Navy, to do too much with too little. The congressional leadership is too focused on stupid shit and cutting taxes for the rich, instead of doing its Constitutionally-mandated job to provide for the Army and Navy (Article I, Section 8). The fuckwads in Congress want to have a global military without paying the real costs of it. The careerists in the services, those wearing stars, do not have the spine to stand up and say "Sirs, unable."

Either we sack up and realize that having a global military is going to require fiscal sacrifices or we should pull back and revert to Jeffersonian levels. Paying for repairs maintenance and training isn't as glamorous or as popular as buying new and shiny airplanes, but Jesus God, people, pull your fucking heads out of your asses for once!

If you are in the Congress or their staffers, or if you are in Ft. Fumble: Do your fucking jobs for once in your miserable lives. You ask much of those serving, it's time that you stand up for them.

You could have grabbed ten people who were walking down the street and half of them would have been more qualified to fill that job than was Clovis. Clovis has not a single science degree or any relevant experience whatsoever. About the only way to find somebody less qualified would be to dig up Tromfin Lysenko.

But he was willing to sign on as Trump's lackey, and that was good enough for Dolt-45.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

The woman has some balls to go on the record and deny that Trump said what he said when the cameras were rolling.

Trump might think the Federal justice system is a joke. Bet that opinion isn't shared by those under Mueller's microscope.

What Trump clearly wants to do is to have to power to unleash death squads. He is a wannabee-authoritarian. Those on the Right, those who consider themselves patriots, should be ashamed of him. If they aren't then they are complicit in Trump's offenses against the rule of law.

There was a car-truck accident outside of my sister's home recently. She called 911 and then ran outside and opened the driver's door to check on the driver. The driver, a teenager, was unconscious. My sister talked to the driver as the driver came out of it, in order to keep the driver calm. (My niece had a bad concussion several years ago, so my sister has some knowledge as to these things.)

As the paramedics were loading the driver up for transport to the ER, my sister became aware that she had breathed in the dust from the air bags' deployment. She could feel it in her lungs and it was also on her face and hands. She asked the paramedics about it and was told that "yep, we all get hit with that stuff, the feeling passes."

Rule No. 5: Terms of Service: Political appointees of the Obama and Bush Administrations may not read this blog unless they (i) post a comment confessing same and (ii) acknowledge that both men are war criminals. This blog may not be read by members of the Arizona Legislature.

Violation of this term is a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C) and you're off to share a cell with Chris Christie, asswipe.

Rule No. 6: If I wanted you to write a "guest post", I'd ask you. Don't bother asking me to put one up from you. I won't. Start yer own goddamn blog.You Have Been Warned.